Noob Questions--mostly on Live TV

[cohiba]

Hey everyone,

I've been evaluating GB-PVR for a bit now, and it looks mostly great, but I have a couple niggling issues that I just can't seem to find a direct answer for when I search the forums or the wiki. I apologize if I missed it, but some simple answers to these basic issues would really help me out.

1. My first gripe is the Live TV viewer. gbpvr found a lot of channels, but I am only getting the "KUTV" type label, not the channel number, signal strength, resolution, or anything else. And none of the channels look HD to me. (I am using a TV Wonder 650 PCI, btw). I also can't tell how to modify channel info, remove channels I don't want, etc.

2. Another TV issue--the HUGE crap all over the screen when watching the channels, with symbols I don't understand. When I watch a channel, I want it to look as close to a regular TV image as possible (e.g. full screen, with no Windows Start bar, no gbpvr title bar along the top, etc), and when I change channels, I want a SMALL control bar to slide up from the bottom with info, controls, etc, and then slide away after a few seconds. Not a huge monstrosity that blocks 2/3 of the screen and stays there for almost forever...

3. I have my pictures, videos, music, and DVDs on a NAS, and I want gbpvr to point to those locations by default when I select those options. But I can't find any way to change the default from the local "My Documents" folder. Is there?

Thanks.

[sub]

Hey everyone,

I've been evaluating GB-PVR for a bit now, and it looks mostly great, but I have a couple niggling issues that I just can't seem to find a direct answer for when I search the forums or the wiki. I apologize if I missed it, but some simple answers to these basic issues would really help me out.

1. My first gripe is the Live TV viewer. gbpvr found a lot of channels, but I am only getting the "KUTV" type label, not the channel number, signal strength, resolution, or anything else.

There is no no functionality to show the signal strength, resolution etc.

And none of the channels look HD to me. (I am using a TV Wonder 650 PCI, btw).

If they're HD, then they'll be displayed as HD. If you'd they should look better than they do, then its likely your video decoder or video card isnt doing a good job in displaying these.

I also can't tell how to modify channel info, remove channels I don't want, etc.

You can remove or disable channels in the capture source settings.

2. Another TV issue--the HUGE crap all over the screen when watching the channels, with symbols I don't understand. When I watch a channel, I want it to look as close to a regular TV image as possible (e.g. full screen, with no Windows Start bar, no gbpvr title bar along the top, etc),

Press Alt-Enter to switch to fullscreen mode, or untick the 'run in window mode' setting in the config app.

and when I change channels, I want a SMALL control bar to slide up from the bottom with info, controls, etc, and then slide away after a few seconds. Not a huge monstrosity that blocks 2/3 of the screen and stays there for almost forever...

I'm quite happy with the default OSD that shows the program information in the bottom 25% of the screen, but if you dont like it you can easily change the skin to use less of the screen. It would be hard to show a description of the show in any less space, but if you dont care about the description you can easily create a skin that doesnt show this information.

3. I have my pictures, videos, music, and DVDs on a NAS, and I want gbpvr to point to those locations by default when I select those options. But I can't find any way to change the default from the local "My Documents" folder. Is there?

I'm not sure what you mean.

[cohiba]

Ok, no signal strength or resolution. How about to show the physical channel number or assigned number (like 10-1)?

My perception on the resolution is because all channels look 4:3. Maybe it is my setup: Asus P5K-VM, E2180, 2GB RAM, TV Wonder 650, 8400GS, DVI out to Toshiba 65" HDTV (65HM167 DLP 1080P)? Are there settings that might work better than the default for this?

I'll check out "capture source settings". Is that in the config app?

I'll give alt-enter a try--thanks.

I wouldn't mind the OSD if it made more sense to me. The buttons don't relate to anything I've seen before, and there is no info, just channel label--perhaps cause I don't have an EPG? (I tried the free 7-day trial of Schedules Direct, but I got busy and it expired before I even got to try it out... ) Normally, I wouldn't want to see hardly anything except channel NUMBER--although for sure I would like to be able to hit "info" or something like that to pull up a more full-featured OSD. Just me I guess.

When I select Pictures, Music, etc from the main gbpvr menu, it opens up to the "My Documents" (I think?) folder by default. Doesn't matter really where, cause it's not where my stuff is. So, I just want to change the default starting point so someone doesn't have to browse my hard drive (or network) to find the photos, music, etc. I have a drive mapped to each, so all I need is an option for "Default Photo Location", etc. Does that make more sense?

Thanks for the prompt response.

[sub]

How about to show the physical channel number or assigned number (like 10-1)?

It currently just shows the channel.

In the next release its also possible for a skin to show the channel number. Note, this in the number next to the channel in the "channels" tab of the config app. The app has no concept of the oddball Major-Minor number thing they use in North America. I'm not in the US so its just designed for good old-fashioned channel numbers as used by the rest of the world.

My perception on the resolution is because all channels look 4:3. Maybe it is my setup: Asus P5K-VM, E2180, 2GB RAM, TV Wonder 650, 8400GS? Are there settings that might work better than the default for this?

If you press F7 it'll toggle between the various aspect ratio modes. Most people just leave it on 'auto', but for this to work correctly you need to have the video decoder set to something other than 'system default'.

I wouldn't mind the OSD if it made more sense to me. The buttons don't relate to anything I've seen before, and there is not info, just channel label--perhaps cause I don't have an EPG? (I tried the free 7-day trial of Schedules Direct, but I got busy and it expired before I even got to try it out... )

I'm not sure what you find so complex about it. It a pretty simple info bar. It shows a small bar with the name of the show, the description of the show, and the current time.



If you dont have the EPG, then it may be more confusing for you since there is a whole lot less info that it can show.

If you're a mouse user and move the mouse you can also see Channel+/Channel-/Pause/Exit buttons. If you're driving the app using a remote control from the couch then you'll never see these buttons.

Normally, I wouldn't want to see hardly anything except channel NUMBER--although for sure I would like to be able to hit "info" or something like that to pull up a more full-featured OSD.

Sorry, thats just not the way it works. I'm sure everyone you ask would want some things to behave differently. Its designed to work the way I like it to behave.

When I select Pictures, Music, etc from the main gbpvr menu, it opens up to the "My Documents" (I think?) folder by default. Doesn't matter really where, cause it's not where my stuff is. So, I just want to change the default starting point so someone doesn't have to browse my hard drive (or network) to find the photos, music, etc. I have a drive mapped to each, so all I need is an option for "Default Photo Location", etc. Does that make more sense?

In that config app on the 'directories' tab you can add whatever directories you want. If there is only one directory defined then it'll go straight to that directory.

[cohiba]

The <alt><enter> and F7 commands helped a lot thanks. I also changed the directories and that solved the music/photos/videos problem perfectly. On a side note, GB-PVR is only displaying the album cover art for a few of my albums--obviously, I'd like all of them. What file does it look for? And the same thing for DVDs (VIDEO_TS folders)--what do I need to do to get cover art and/or other movie info?

On to TV: Yes, I don't get the EPG info, and I am using a mouse, so all I saw were those +/-/= buttons that didn't make sense--if only because sometimes they didn't seem to be doing anything--they were, there was just no on-screen confirmation of anything (on static channels, it was hard to tell if it was changing).

Which brings up my next point. Turns out, there is a good reason all my stations looked SD, cause they were! I had the coax plugged into the analog tuner. I put in a post on this a while ago, and thought I had made a mistake when no channels were found by GB-PVR on the DTV port, so when I got some channels plugged into the other one, I thought that was the fix, and assumed that would get me all the channels. Well, I recently installed a different HDTV viewer and not surprisingly, it found nothing until I plugged it *back* into the DTV port. Then it found all the digital channels with no problem--and it looks great. However, I still can't get GB-PVR to find even a single channel. In the other thread, you said:

Try doing a channel scan then zip and attach your config.exe.log and config.exe-native.log and I'll take a look.

So I'll do that tonight.

You've mentioned several times how this app is made for how you want it to work. I get it--I'll stop mentioning any different way to do things. I am very happy that at least the channel number will be making an appearance.

Thanks for your help so far.

[cohiba]

Alright, I have those files. Any help is appreciated.

[sub]

That set of logs doesnt show a scan. May sure you go into the 'Map digital channels to epg channels' screen, then repost the config.exe.log and config.exe-native.log and I'll take a look.